In Loving Memory
by ncfan
Summary: Fëanor learns about death.


I own nothing.

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Fëanáro wasn't allowed to see Mama anymore. When he was told that, he assumed that he was being punished, but since he didn't know why he was being punished, he went to his father.

Alight with curiosity (and not a small amount of vexation), Fëanáro went to his father, tugging on his sleeve and staring up into his face. "Father, why can't I see Mama anymore?" He frowned a little, tipping his head downwards. "Is she angry with me?"

And his father looked down at him, his face painted with shock, and exclaimed, "No, my son, of course she is not! She has just…" The seconds drifted slowly by as he struggled for an answer. "…Your mother has simply gone away for a while."

At least, that was the way Fëanáro imagined the conversation would have gone, had he been old enough to reason and remember.

She was absent, she was gone. This Fëanáro knew from the moment he could grasp the word 'mother' and cling to its meaning like a shipwrecked sailor grasped driftwood. His father told him when he asked. No one ever tried to hide it from him, and how could they? Even if they did, he would inevitably notice that his father, alone among all fathers, had no wife. Inevitably he would notice that he alone among all children had no mother.

Míriel Þerindë had cut the ties between her body and her soul.

Míriel Þerindë had chosen to die in a place where there was no death.

Míriel Þerindë, alone of all Quendi, perished in the Undying Lands.

Giving birth sapped her of all her strength, you see. It happened often by Cuiviénen, though we never expected it to happen here. Her son stole all of her vitality; why else would he be so strong, and she dead?

He must have been a ravenous spirit, to do that to her here.

_It wasn't my fault_! Fëanáro wanted to scream, when he heard the whispering start. And so he had screamed, to his father and his nurse on the rare occasions that they tried to speak to him of Míriel. They would both sweep him up in their arms and tell him that of course it wasn't his fault, and he never need doubt that he was blameless, but he still felt their blame. He still felt everyone staring at him with questions in their eyes, wondering if this child had killed his mother.

Fëanáro was a young child, but he was not one lacking in curiosity, and he knew that he was far more literate than most children his age. He did not know much about death, but that could be rectified. He had full access to the royal library, and made good use of it.

Death. Anything he could find, any scrap of information, anything to know what it was that had happened to her. Anything to know about death, the privation that Míriel Þerindë had endured, and ultimately succumbed to. Anything to understand death, how death can come upon the Quendi, what it entails. Anything to know that it wasn't his fault.

Fëanáro did not learn much. He had heard of tomes of history of Cuiviénen, of the brutal lives of the Quendi before they made the journey to Aman, but he could not find them in the library—they were either kept on shelves too high for Fëanáro to reach, or his father had sequestered them away somewhere the simply curious could not find them. Death, he learned, was a malady that afflicted the Quendi sometimes. It could come upon them violently, or it could come on them from hunger, or thirst, or simple weariness. It said that nissi could sometimes die in childbirth, or die afterwards from their weariness. _"…The bearing of children is hard on the bodies and spirits of nissi, and they may perish from their weariness, all of their vitality of spirit having gone into their children…"_

It was at this point that Fëanáro slammed the book shut.

He still didn't understand. This was Aman. It was a blessed place, free of death. The Quendi lived under the light of the Two Trees, which gave healing and vitality and strength. Míriel should not have been like those nissi by Cuiviénen, who perished in childbirth or afterwards because they labored in darkness, and were weakened by hunger to start with. It shouldn't have happened to her.

Was it his fault, then?

Fëanáro did not understand. The more he read, the less he wished to understand. The idea that it truly was his fault made him balk, set his blood to boiling, but he did not understand. He could not grasp the idea. These were the Undying Lands. Quendi did not die here. Except for Míriel Þerindë. She alone of all Quendi had died in the Undying Lands. He did not understand, and did not wish to.

Sometimes, he would wander the halls, and imagined that she walked with him. He painted another's face over the face of his nurse; the illusion was always crushed when she spoke. When he was alone, Fëanáro conjured up in his mind the sound of swishing skirts and rustling sleeves. He imagined her hair gleaming in Laurelin's light. He saw in his mind the glint of her eyes, thought up for her a voice that would fit all that he had heard of her—brisk and clever and well-spoken. There were times when Fëanáro could even will himself to see a second shadow beside his.

But she was not here. Míriel was not here, and she would never walk beside him. She would never sit at his side at dinner, nor teach him her craft. She would never come into his room to cosset him after he had a nightmare.

Maybe this was what death meant for the living. Maybe this separation Fëanáro felt, the unjust absence at his side, the blank spot where her shadow should have been, that was death. Maybe death wasn't something that mattered to the dead, but instead was just something that mattered only to the living.

Maybe she alone had lived, and they were all dead, noting her absence as the only strange thing of their world. It could have been anything. Fëanáro did not know, and did not wish to know. He heard the footsteps of blame trailing after him too often to wish for knowledge, these days.

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Fëanáro—Fëanor

Quendi—Elves (singular: Quendë) (Quenya)  
Nissi—women (singular: nís)


End file.
